The U.S. Air Force is searching for portable air defense guns capable of destroying drones and cruise missiles after Iranian attacks devastated American installations across the Middle East.
The urgent effort reflects a battlefield reality that can no longer be buried beneath procurement jargon.
The Ground Based, Medium Caliber Gun Weapon System project seeks a weapon “that fires affordable munitions, enables defense against air and missile threats with an initial focus on subsonic cruise missiles (CM) and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to provide persistent defense in support of United States Air Force assets,” according to a Request for Information published Thursday. Industry responses are due Oct. 9.
Iran launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. military installations and civilian infrastructure throughout the region amid bombardment by American and Israeli forces.
Those attacks exposed dangerous gaps in defenses protecting troops, aircraft, equipment, and the temporary facilities increasingly used during overseas operations.
American troops were killed after an Iranian one way attack drone slipped past U.S. air defenses and slammed into a makeshift operations center at a civilian port in Kuwait.
Additional troops were killed during strikes on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The attacks also damaged U.S. aircraft sitting on the ground, including five KC 135 aerial refueling aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base.
Losing valuable planes before they can even launch is exactly the kind of nightmare that layered base defenses are supposed to prevent.
The Air Force has not specified the exact caliber it wants, although its use of the phrase “medium-caliber” points toward a weapon between 20mm and 50mm.
That range offers enough destructive power to shred incoming unmanned aircraft and cruise missiles without using an absurdly expensive interceptor against every cheap flying threat.
The Army began examining a similar answer in August when it published a notice seeking sources for a 50mm cannon and suitable anti drone ammunition.
It plans to conduct a live fire demonstration using Northrop Grumman’s XM913 Bushmaster 50mm chain gun, with participating companies providing the ammunition.
The proposed Air Force system will be judged against 15 baseline parameters, including its probability of kill against subsonic cruise missiles.
It must also confront Group 1 through Group 5 unmanned aircraft, a broad category stretching from small battlefield drones to very large aircraft operating above 18,000 feet.
Finding and tracking those targets will be as important as firing the gun itself. Contractors “must carefully select the organic sensor capability and phenomenology—integrating the right mix of radar, electro-optical, infrared, or radio-frequency sensors—to ensure reliable target acquisition and tracking across varying weather conditions, environments, and countermeasure scenarios,” the Air Force emphasized.
Candidate weapons will also be measured by their range, firing elevation, magazine capacity, crew requirements, and ability to connect with outside sensors and command networks.
The Air Force does not merely need another isolated gun mount that becomes useless when threats arrive from several directions.
The system must defeat saturation attacks involving numerous drones and missiles arriving within a compressed period.
That requirement is critical because adversaries increasingly attempt to overwhelm American defenses through sheer volume, forcing defenders to expend ammunition faster than magazines can be replenished.
Mobility is another major requirement for a service that routinely operates from remote or rapidly established locations.
The Air Force wants “a lightweight, modular, and transportable footprint that can be swiftly projected into austere theater environments to meet emergent threats.”
The request recognizes one of the most punishing problems facing modern air defense planners.
Current systems can fire interceptors costing far more than the drones they destroy, while cheaper systems may lack sufficient ammunition to survive repeated waves from an enemy willing to trade bargain priced drones for American lives and aircraft.
Iranian attacks have demonstrated that an adversary does not need exquisite technology if it can exploit gaps, exhaust magazines, or launch enough weapons at once.
A relatively inexpensive drone that destroys a tanker aircraft, operations center, or troop shelter produces an ugly exchange rate for the United States.
The new system “must optimize munition performance versus munition cost and gun capability, ensuring that the interceptor’s velocity, maneuverability, and terminal effects are maximized without driving the cost-per-engagement to unsustainable levels or exceeding the physical constraints of the host platform,” the request stated.
In plain English, the gun must hit hard, remain affordable, carry enough ammunition, and arrive wherever American forces need protection.
